Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) vowed that “Anthony Fauci will answer to the American people” in an X post as he ramps up his investigation into the former top health official’s role in the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said his investigation into COVID-19 origins has been blocked in the past but is now moving forward with broader access to records. Paul suggested that newly reviewed evidence and a subpoena for testimony will force answers to long-running questions about the pandemic and government-funded research. “The investigation of COVID origins has been going on for several years,” Paul said on Fox News’s Sunday Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “The Biden administration’s stubbornness wouldn’t give us any of the documents. The Trump administration has been very cooperative; they’ve turned over virtually everything.”
At the center of Paul’s investigation is the claim that Fauci oversaw or approved federal funding connected to gain-of-function research, which involves studying viruses to assess how they might evolve.The issue has remained at the center of congressional investigations into the origins of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that was first identified in late 2019. The pandemic claimed more than 1.2 million lives in the United States and an estimated more than 7 million worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
